The interview process and InVue consisted of 2 telephone and 2 on-site interviews.
The first telephone interview was with the company recruiter, Anthony Caputi. When working with external recruiters, they will often coach you on how to put your best foot forward with a company. However, knowing that Anthony worked directly for InVue, I was somewhat nervous about being boldly honest. That being said, I don't know how else to be, so I was very upfront with him about what I was looking for and why. To my surprise, Anthony did not act solely as an advocate for InVue, but as an advocate for me as well. He helped me understand the company values and culture and assisted me in determining if InVue would be a good fit for me. He also gave me a bit of advice to take with me as I continued along the interview process with the rest of the company while maintaining his integrity as an InVue employee. His help and honesty was appreciated.
The second telephone interview was with the department manager, Rishi Gogate. I am a firm believer that a candidate is interviewing a company just as much as the company is interviewing the candidate. With that in mind, I felt as though the interview with Rishi was very balanced. He not only asked me questions about my background and career goals, but he gave me plenty of opportunity to ask questions about InVue, the specific job requirements, and the company culture as a whole. I felt like I walked away from the phone call with a much greater understanding of the company and how I'd be able to fit in.
Next came the first on-site interview. This interview lasted pretty much all day. First was a SolidWorks CAD test to determine my parametric modeling skill, followed by a series of individual and team interviews with various managers and engineers. As before, I felt like everyone I met with was very sociable, pleasant, honest and forthright with their responses. The most important part of this interview, for me, was getting to meet all the different employees. I have been at companies in the past where you only meet 1 or 2 people during the interview process and they are all managers or directors. Meeting with potential co-workers as well was very helpful in exposing the company culture and how people interact and work together. I enjoyed this aspect of the InVue interviews very much.
The last step of the interview process was the second on-site interview. The major difference, between this and the first, was the white-board session with 3 or 4 engineers. Essentially, they presented various engineering problems and questions to me with the expectation that I would contribute in the design/brainstorm discussion to find a solution to the problems. I loved this part of the interview process because it is indicative of real life as an engineer. An engineer needs to be able to sit down, look at a problem, and quickly start developing solutions. This stage of the interview showed me 2 important things about InVue. The first is that InVue is a team-oriented environment. The engineers are not expected to be islands unto themselves, but to be collaborative and draw from each other's experiences and skills. The second is that I would be able to fit in right away. I felt valuable and useful. Most of the time an interview feels like you're being picked at so the company can expose all your flaws in an effort to exclude you as a candidate. During the entire interview process, but especially during the white-board session, I felt included. I felt like my opinions and my ideas mattered, that what I had to say had value. I felt more valued during my interview at InVue than I had felt over the last year at my previous company.
One other key thing, to me, was that throughout the entire interview process, the recruiter was very engaging and was always very responsive to my emails and questions. That's saying something because I asked a LOT of questions and I feared at one point that I might annoy the man to death. That being said, he was always very polite and helpful.
If you don't like the interview process, especially the white-board session, you probably won't like working here. However, if you're like me and you enjoy the interview process and the white-board session, you will likely really enjoy your job.
